had no idea how long she had been standing there before there was a tentative tap on the door. It was followed by a voice calling her name.
‘I just wondered—are you all right, Lucy?’
Lucy straightened her shoulders, took a deep sustaining breath and opened the door. An anxious-looking Ramon, who was standing directly behind it, took a step back.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, forcing a smile as she emerged. ‘Sorry about that but I’ve never liked the sight of even a speck of blood.’ She stopped and shook her head and looked at him with eyes dark with emotion. ‘I’m fine with blood, Ramon, but not your brother. I can’t do this … over the years I’ve developed a thick skin but somehow he manages … I’m tired of being judged,’ she finished with a weary sigh.
Ramon shook his head and looked remorseful as he enfolded her in a comforting bear hug. ‘God, no, it’s me. I shouldn’t have asked you to do this. It’s my problem, not yours, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting Santiago to be quite so …’ His hands slid down her arms and stayed there.
Standing in the loose circle of his arms, Lucy gave a shrug. ‘And you thought I could take it? I thought so, too,’ she admitted. ‘I really don’t care what your brother thinks of me,’ she hastened to assure Ramon. ‘But this stopped being my idea of a fun evening when he started making snide remarks about my family.’
‘I understand,’ Ramon said.
Lucy was wondering a little uneasily about the inflection in his voice when he reached out and touched her forehead. ‘God, you’re going to have a bruise there,’ he said, touching the discoloured area that was developing on her forehead. ‘You really took a bang.’
Santiago stood in the minstrels’ gallery, his unblinking stare trained on the couple below, tension vibrating in every taut fibre of his lean body as he listened to the buzz of their soft voices, unable to make out the words, but you didn’t need words to see the intimacy in the way they stood close together.
When his brother touched her face tenderly he turned, biting back a harsh gasp as he felt something kick hard and low in his belly.
‘I’ll try and stay in character,’ Lucy promised Ramon. ‘But after tonight that’s it.’
She returned to the dining room with some trepidation, but the rest of meal passed relatively uneventfully. Their host showed little inclination to make conversation other than a few passing asides to Carmella, which should have been a good thing but turned out not to be.
Lucy was painfully conscious of his eyes following her and spent the entire meal waiting for him to pounce, so tense that every bone in her body ached with it.
And of course she did what she always did when she was nervous: she babbled like an idiot until the sound of her own bright chattering voice was giving even her a headache. Afterwards she didn’t have a clue what she had been talking about, which was probably a good thing.
Santiago excused himself before coffee was served and Lucy used his absence to make her own hurried exit. Outside, it was a beautiful night. She released a long sigh and breathed in the fresh night air almost dizzy with relief that the ordeal was over.
Just behind her she was conscious of Ramon pausing to speak to the man who had emerged from the house but the effort of translating what they were saying was beyond her.
She was struggling to think anything beyond the fact that she was escaping from this place and that hateful man; she wanted to forget the entire evening had ever happened.
And she would—tomorrow she would go back to doing what she had actually come here to do. God knew why she had ever got involved. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been insulted before, but she had never lowered herself to her persecutor’s level; she had always maintained her silence and the moral high ground.
Anyway this was not her battle, it was Ramon’s. If he had issues with his brother he could sort them out himself. ‘Wait in the car.’
Lucy automatically extended a hand to catch the keys he threw her. ‘What?’
‘Phone call. It’s urgent and no one can find Santiago. I’ll be back in a minute,’ Ramon promised, following the sober-suited man back indoors.
No one knows where he is. She glanced back at the building; golden light spilled from the windows making her think of eyes watching her.
‘Seriously paranoid, Lucy.’ Her laugh had a hollow sound as she turned her back on the building, unable to shake the feeling that the man they couldn’t find was in one of those windows watching her.
She shivered and told herself it was the chill in the evening air. Despite this she did not follow Ramon’s suggestion and take shelter in the car. Instead Lucy wandered away from the brooding presence of the sombre fortified house.
She had walked some way across the manicured lawn when she found herself drawn towards the sound of water and discovered, not the pond she had expected, but a river.
She walked out onto the wooden bridge and, leaning her arms on the rail, gazed down into the dark water. Her expression was pensive as her thoughts drifted, the memories of the evening revolving in her head. If not the worst night of her life, it had been right up there.
On the plus side—her brow puckered as she struggled to come up with one, other than the fact the night was over and if she ever saw Santiago Silva again she would leg it in the opposite direction. She was hanging up her scarlet-woman hat.
Trailing a hand towards the water, she leaned farther over the rail, following a leaf caught on the current, running to the opposite side as it disappeared from view to follow its progress.
Santiago, who had followed her from outside the house, watched as she leaned forward. The lust that lay coiled in his belly morphed into alarm as she leaned so far over the rail that she appeared in danger of toppling in. This woman seemed oddly drawn to water and bridges.
‘If you’re planning on jumping in don’t expect me to leap in and save you.’
Lucy started as if shot, took a hasty step backwards and found herself staring at Santiago. He was looking mean, moody and, if she was honest, totally magnificent in the moonlight.
She took a deep breath and lifted her chin as he stepped onto the bridge.
‘Relax, I don’t need saving. I’m not on the lookout for a white knight.’ Which was just as well as he definitely did not meet the criteria … all that dark brooding stuff made him far more likely to be the bad boy.
‘That wasn’t an offer.’
‘And it so happens I swim like a fish.’ She felt no guilt for playing up her ability.
‘Just as well, given your affinity for water. I keep finding you knee deep.’
She extended a leg, displaying a dry and slightly muddied shoe. ‘I wasn’t paddling, but I’m a Pisces so maybe that’s it, and I wasn’t going to jump.’
‘No …?’
‘You sound disappointed.’
His grin flashed and faded as his dark glance slid down
